Triple C Brewing Company – Charlotte, North Carolina

What better start could there be to a weekend than getting up early on a Saturday morning and driving two hours to an IKEA? It’s not like those places are crazy busy with every sort of individual I’d typically do my best to avoid, or like the store is enormous, confusing and takes at least 20 minutes to speed walk through.

Nonetheless, that’s where I found myself on the morning of March 18. After picking out a kitchen cabinet to use as an entryway “fauxdenza” (don’t ask), marching downstairs to try to find it, and then marching back upstairs to order it from the desk up there as you’re apparently supposed to do for kitchen items, I was ready to get the hell out of there.

And ready for a drink.

My wife and I were scheduled to meet some friends and their baby over at Olde Mecklenburg, but we had some time to kill. Luckily, there’s about a half-dozen breweries all clustered together on that side of town. With so many options, we decided to give Triple C a shot.

I’d had their beers several times before both at beer festivals and in bombers — probably a few times on draft as well. I knew they could handle their hops from a pretty decent double IPA dubbed “Babymaker,” so it made for a pretty easy choice.

Their brick-and-mortar is gorgeous. The building doesn’t look like a whole lot from the outside – your typical brewery in an industrial part of town with a lot of hard-worn streets and facades – but they’ve done a magnificent job with the interior. There’s a lot of reclaimed wood on the walls and the furniture is sleek and industrial. They definitely nailed the vibe, especially given the neighborhood.

We cruised through two sample flights consisting of four five-ounce pours each. I preferred the taste of their lighter offerings, such as the Golden Boy blonde ale and the GABF broze-winning 3C IPA. Our second flight featured a BBA chocolate pretzel imperial stout aged three ways: mocha, coconut, and mint. For some reason, our server claimed to like the mint version the best. I personally have never tasted a mint beer a enjoyed, and theirs was not the first. But all the other beers were quite enjoyable.

All in all, a very solid offering and location. I would frequent often if I lived in Charlotte.